Heart of Fire and Ice
by StormwalkerofLorien
Summary: Drabbles based on the trailer from HTTYD2. Mostly about Valka, because she seems like a really interesting character but there's going to be others too. Low T for language.
1. Who What Where Why How?

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. Zilch. Except for the character I created a while ago who I mention in the A/N.**

**Author's Note: Valka's character really intrigued me, because I had a character a while ago who was kind of similar to her in personality from what I can gather, and her back story will be interesting to tell and write... MWA HA HA HA HA! Plot bunnies are running loose in my head :) **

**Read and Review please. This is a short drabble, but there will be longer ones.**

"I don't suppose sorry cuts it?"

Hiccup cocked an eyebrow, tipping his head to stare up into his mother's weathered face. "I don't suppose you could have alerted me of your presence instead of sneaking up behind me like a cat?"

Valka sighed in defeat, running a finger down the bridge of her nose. Her voice was strained through her lips as she asked quietly, "May I join you?"

He gestured to the empty earth beside him, where Astrid had left to take care of her weapons. She sat down, still as silent as a night fury and probably just as deadly.

"Why?" he asked her, and she winced at how broken the boy sounded. She had laid so much on his shoulders in one day, and it left her with even more guilt to suffer after fifteen years of questioning her decision.

"Why did I leave?"

"What other why is there?"

She understood his grudge; after all, she had left him with a tribe of Vikings to lead and the task of making them see past the tips of their weapons. Which he had succeeded in doing, though he lost his leg in the process. And she could not shake the feeling that this was all ultimately her fault. So the least she owed him was an explanation.

"What do you want to know?"

"Who you were. Why you left. Why you never came back to us."

"That is all quite a long story to tell."

"I have a lot of time."

She sighed. "You'll have to go back to Berk eventually, you know. You cannot run from your responsibilities forever."

"You mean like you did?" he shot back. "You've been here for -what- sixteen years at the least, running away. Hiding. Why shouldn't I do the same?"

"Because my life was a mistake, while yours was a miracle."

"Well then why didn't you stay?" He closed his eyes, taking in the ocean breeze and pretending it could sweep him away from all of his problems and duties. "What were you running from?" There was a long pause as she pondered the question, turning it over in her mind like a riverbed worry-stone.

"Myself," she whispered at last. "I was running from myself."

**More of Valka's Back Story Later :)**

**Updates are not going to be totally consistent but I won't abandon the story**


	2. Self-Proclaimed Fables

**And chapter two is out! The first few chapters are going to be Valka relaying her back story to Hiccup so that I can establish a base plot line and then branch out into other stories, like the discovery of the dragon queen and whatnot. Happy New Year, guys! Read and review, please.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the awesome nicknames I came up with for Valka's past self and the legend she sort of became... also Svalbard was not stolen from His Dark Materials. It's actually a real place, which I didn't know until a couple of years ago. **

"Who are you?"

Valka was used to interrogation. She suffered it quite often from the unfortunate dragon trappers who crossed her path. But she was not used to submitting to such questions.

"I am a legend among your people and forgotten among my own," she said ominously, and Hiccup couldn't help but realize that her natural voice was perfect for ominous, foreboding responses, as if she was born to spout enigmatic prophecies. Not to mention she seemed to consider herself more of a myth than a person, and for the life of him, he couldn't read her expressions at all. It bothered him to no end.

"Do you think you could give me a straight answer for once?" he growled under his breath. Please?"

"I find no use for straight answers in my life, but very well. I am the last surviving Viking North of Berk, as far as I can see from the skies and mountaintops."

"So you were not from Berk?"

Valka smiled wryly and shook her head. "I was from much farther north than your village -a colony on the island of Svalbard."

"I don't know how that's possible," grumbled Hiccup quietly. "You would freeze to death if you came from any farther north than here."

"We nearly did," she admitted, "before our chief took up the ships and sailed his colony southward. I was only a young girl at the time, maybe twelve years old, but I remember the voyage as if it were yesterday. Curse my sharp memory." Her eyes grew misty and cold, as if a Northern wind had swept through her face and frozen it in time. Her angular features was almost stonelike as she called the old memories back from their tombs deep within all the pain she had stowed away over the years.

"The seas around Svalbard were beastly," she began, in a voice like crystals of ice slowly rising from the snow on a dry winter morning. "They struck our shis with waves higher than mountain pines, leaving the masts nothing more than scarred stakes of wood. We had no chance to survive the journey. We knew not where we were going, only that we were going Southward. The waves tossed our ships like corpses in a bloodfeasting crusade.

A storm was brewing in the mist of it all, turning the water like a child's wooden spinning top. Thunder roared like the drums of war between the streaks of jagged lightning that fell from the sky to the sea. The clouds came to life, rolling and parting for the monsterous tempest to charge upon its horse of darkness into battle. His flag came down upon us, a sheet of rain and hail that turned our hair to ice and trapped us in the rage of the storm.

"A few raised their swords and screamed curses to the sky, hoping that any god would hear them and end the squall. But it was not in our destiny to surive. Many leapt into the sea, only to chatter their teeth and die in frozen silence between the chanting rolls of thunder. I turned my back on the sea and climbed to the dragon's head afront our ship. Its wood was soggy and a sickly pale green, but at least I was not writhing in the flames that engulfed our ship. We were trapped between a wall of fire and the frozen sea. We simply had to choose our means of death."

"Well clearly you didn't die," mumbled Hiccup, "so something must have happened."

Valka snorted. "You don't sound very sympathetic."

"You don't sound particularly nurturing and maternal."

"No," she whispered, almost to herself, "I do not suspect I do."

With an awkward whistle, Hiccup muttered, "So continue with the story."

She pursed her lips and allowed her expressions to grow distant once more, disappearing into the tales of her past.

"A wave of wreckage and the remains of our colony crashed into our ship, knocking the dragon's head loose. I went with it, falling into the sea, clinging to the waterlogged timber. If the storm had not passed quickly after that, I would not have survived. I do not remember much when the tempest fell away, for I was so cold and wet that I lost consciousness. I woke up in the claws of a dragon.

"The massive beast had clearly mistaken me for one of its brood, and it was not hard to see why. My hair was knotted in splinters and bits of torn fabric from the shipwreck, and I was beaten by the waters to exhaustion."

"So you were raised by dragons?" Asked Hiccup, his voice displaying a hint of curiosity that he did his best to mask with resentment.

"Essentially, yes. They taught me to how to hunt and how to fight. To this day my only weapon curves like a dragon's claw, because that is the only form of blade with which I can fight."

"You still haven't gotten to the point of why you never stayed."

She quirked her eyebrows and forced herself to look her son in the eye. "Would you like me to get straight to the point? Because frankly, without context, my reasons for leaving will only make you hate me more." Her words were straightforward, laying her bitter swarm of emotion bare in the wind for all to feel.

He shot her the exact same gesture in return before looking back to the sea and the early moonlight reflecting in its waves.

"Go on."

Valka made no move to acknowledge his words, simply picking up where she left off with no hesitation whatsoever.

"I came to know the mountains like the back of my hand, wandering where I pleased whenever I felt like it. It was the very meaning of freedom. Eventually, I came upon Berk. Having not interacted with humans for at least ten years of my life - mind you, I cannot even remember my age or birthday by now- I avoided it. But their hatred of dragons was like a needle under my skin: constantly pricking my mind despite how hard I tried to ignore it. I was never a very good activist. I preferred my passive isolationism to meddling with the concerns of Vikings. Nonetheless, I found that I could not very easily stand by and watch them slay dragons, ignorant of the creatures' individual personas."

"So you began to rescue them," concluded Hiccup.

She mused for a moment. "In a way, I did. Mostly I found myself hovering at the edge of the forest at night, waiting for the raids to begin and reigning in as many dragons as I could before someone killed them. I did not know exactly what caused them to raid the villages, though I suspected a sort of worker-bee motive. Feeding the queen, and such. I discovered years later that I was right, but that is a tangent I would prefer not to fall back to."

Sub-consciously, ran her fingers beneath her ear, pushing her hair out of the way, revealing the burn scars that Hiccup pretended not to notice when she turned to face him again. He suspected she had been through many adventures that turned sour on her, leaving her with memories she did her best to forget. He just hoped the story she was telling him now was not one of them.

"Inevitably, people began to notice the disappearing dragons and the human footprints with them and founded a sort of fairy tale. They called me the Nightwalker, the Dragonlord, even the Shadow man. Now, I suppose, I can laugh at them from a distance, but at the time I always found it rather insulting how they naturally assumed their dragon saving wanderer was male."

"But obviously they discovered you sometime," interrupted Hiccup.

"Yes, I was getting to that. Actually my presence was never made known to the village." She chuckled almost bitterly, without humor. "Your father at least had the grace not to inform the entire village that I was living in the woods and stalking them on their daily outings and dragon raids."

"So they never found out you were a real person?" Hiccup asked with plain incredulity. "That doesn't make sense. Wouldn't they be kind of suspicious if their chief suddenly had a son out of nowhere?"

Valka laughed again. "By the time you came around, the people were getting so restless they might as well have painted 'produce and heir, already' across Stoick's front door. If he mysteriously had a son, they weren't about to ask questions." For once Valka's eyes twinkled with geniune amusement.

Hiccup, on the other hand, simply groaned. "They did," he mumbled, his cheeks flushed bright red at the memories his brain had just conjured up.

"Did what?" she asked, cocking her head to one side like a curious Night Fury.

"Painted 'produce an heir, already' across the front door." His voice rose to a higher pitch, almost a squeak, of near panic. "And I'm barely nineteen!"

And for the first time in fifteen years, give or take, the inscrutable Dragon Rider doubled over in hysterics.

**If you have an idea for a drabble you want me to write or for something that should happen in Valka's back story or anything along those lines, post it in the review section! I'm open to anyone's ideas :)**


	3. Going Down in Flames

**Hello, folks! *crickets chirping.* I've been updating a lot lately, because I've had the time to, but updates will probably be less frequent in the next week. Also, I've raised the rating to a low T. VERY low T, just because of slight language in this chapter and so I can be safe in future chapters. But there will really be very little T-rated anything in this story. Just being safe and possibly a bit paranoid. After this chapter, we'll switch from Valka telling the story to drabbles about what actually happens.**

"How did I meet Stoick?" Valka's eyebrows shot up and her lips quirked in amusement. Hiccup was beginning to realize that she communicated mostly through gestures and expressions, as she'd had little need to speak aloud surrounded only by dragons. "Well, I didn't properly meet him until a while after I first saw him in the woods, tracking a dragon. First time I saw him, I tried to kill him, no questions asked." She said it nonchalantly, though that tinge of amusement still lingered in her eyes.

Hiccup glanced over at her, his face scrunched up in confusion. "What?" he asked dumbly, as if he couldn't comprehend why she would want to kill someone upon first sight. It hit her that most people probably needed context in a situation like that. She'd spent virtually no time around other people in the past fifteen years, and she certainly had trouble with bits of proper communication. Not the language itself, but the way they told stories, usually offering explanations when it was deemed necessary. Generally she didn't really like giving explanations. Then whoever was asking the questions would get bold and start requesting details, and asking for names, and soon they would have enough information to hunt her down and kill her without leaving a trace.

But perhaps she should make an exception, as he was her son and asking for the story of how his parents met. And it wasn't like he could judge her anymore than he already had. In fact, an explanation might make him hate her less, and not to have her only son hate her would be a nice turn of events. So she looked him in the eye (albeit a bit awkawrdly) and explained.

"He had dragon scales around his neck," she said quietly, "and a sword in his hand. From that I could glean that he was probably out to kill something, and generally Vikings set out to kill dragons" She shrugged, as if it were a perfectly normal assumption to make and a perfectly normal way to deal with it.

"There was no moon that night, and we were in the middle of the forest, so I could have just slit his throat then and there without anyone finding me. I wasn't really expecting him to put up a fight, so when he did, I slipped away.

"I also wasn't expecting him to come back again. And again, and again. And - well, here you are right now; I'm sure you can deduce the rest of the story."

Hiccup shifted uncomfortably as her eyes searched the ocean like a ship lost at sea, alone in the midst of this vast emptiness between the sea and the sky. "But why did you leave? You still haven't told me that."

"Perhaps," she murmured, still gazing into the horizon as the stars peeked out above, "I will never understand exactly why I left. But I was frightened of the village. Of the prospects of law and order. Of fighting the creatures that raised me. Of leaving the family I had for the family I had gained. And, most of all, that I was close to comfortable with it. A sudden welling of love and happiness was consuming me. Like I was burning alive and didn't give a damn. I thought I was losing myself, though I realize now that there wasn't anything of me to lose. I did not know who I was, nor who I wanted to be."

Her voice was hard and cracked, as if there were stones in her throat, forcing back a scream of frustration that she could not let the world hear. Like her pain was almost a sign of weakness. Yet she continued to speak, if only to prove to herself that she was not weak.

"Now I look back knowing that I probably could have made them listen to me and believe my claims about dragons. But my fear was self-created, so I fled from it. From myself. From the person I thought I was becoming, though I wasn't really ever a person. And it's all rather sad when I think about it, because the whole time I thought I had to be like them… the Vikings… to earn their respect and love, and the Vikings hated dragons. But all along their wonderful, thickheaded chief had fallen for a woman who practically was one. And it's so perfect that it hurts like all Hell is feeding my guilt."

Hiccup was silent. He had no words left. This woman was, in her own words, practically a dragon, yet she left more emotions hanging in the air than all the people in Berk combined. And confused as he was, he couldn't shake the feeling that _it all made sense now_. His whole life, every idea that crossed his mind, all the teasing he suffered as a teen, it all made perfect sense. And despite Valka's tendency to speak in riddles, he knew that her complicated swarm of emotions and words was most likely the simplest explanation for it all. Heck, he didn't even know what 'it all' was anymore. He'd wanted to know why she left, and she had told him a lot more than that.

She felt like she deserved to be hated, yet she wanted so badly to be loved. He wished he could hold a grudge, now that he knew the truth, but with all that she had given him in the past hours, she had taken the resentment from his heart, most likely laying it upon her own like another ball and chain for the ghost she had become to drag along.

**Hope you enjoyed! More details and less storytelling in the next chapters. Read and review please, with your ideas for what could come next :)**


	4. The Likeness of a Thunderhead

**I thought about chronological order... and then I decided 'heck with that; these will be out of order, because my ideas never come in chronological order.' But they're still drabbles, and they're still back story. There'll be a lot of stuff about storms in the next few chapters (and probably after that) because I think they're a perfect entity to describe a lot of things. This being one of them. So yeah... drabble number four, which is not, if you were wondering, in narrative style. This is actually a short story not being told by Valka. We're branching out, folks! :D **

**Hope you enjoy. All standard disclaimers apply, because I'm too lazy to list them in detail with a clever snarky comment to go with them. **

"Why are you here?" The words escaped his lips just as she released another arrow from her bowstring, watching with satisfaction as it flew into the wooden target hanging from her tree. It did not hit dead center, but given how awful a shot she had been just several moons ago, it was great progress simply to hit the wood.

She shrugged in response to his question. "I needed to kill something." She notched another arrow and let it soar forward a second time. "And I did not want to kill something that was actually alive."

A chuckle escaped his lips.

"Why?" she asked, setting down the bow and turning to face him, her back resting against another evergreen. "Why are you here?"

"I needed to speak with you in a place where you had something to kill other than me."

For just a moment, he thought he saw the old sarcastic glimmer in her eyes. "Now why would I kill you?"

"For complicating your very simple lifestyle. For forcing you out of your self-imposed isolation. For knocking you up before you could disappear like the ghost you are in our stories." He rand his hand down his face, over his stubble of a beard that had yet to make him look like a real Viking chief.

She shrugged again, twiddling the shaft of her bow between her forefinger and thumb, like she always did when she was deep in thought. She had those habits and gestures that allowed him to read her far better than her words permitted. After a moment of silence, she muttered, "Would have happened eventually anyway."

He snorted, and she shot him a glare through the last rays of sunlight.

"I meant being forced from my self-imposed isolation, fool," she muttered, rolling her eyes, "not being knocked up."

At this he had to pause. He rarely had a clever retort up his sleeve on the spot, so he took to studying every curve in her face. She did, in fact, look quite like a ghost. A heavily pregnant, melodramatic, and occaisionally resentful ghost, but a ghost nonetheless. She slipped between shadows and wandered where she pleased, speaking to whom she chose to speak and telling her tales to very few. Even Stoick himself had never heard her story. He knew she was the Nightwalker, who lived off the mountains, and he knew he loved her. Beyond that, though, her past was an impenetrable fog that he dared not squint to see through.

"A storm's coming," she murmured quietly to herself, eyes turned up ward to the clouds gathering overhead. The faint outline of a full moon shone through the canopy, lighting up the thunderheads that encompassed it. Soon the moon would blot out, and lightning would fall from the sky like it did when the ocean swallowed her colony.

_How ironic_. She loosed the arrow from her fingers, instead resting a hand on her swollen abdomen. _Like the storm_, she thought to herself with a glance up at Stoick. Swords of death and fire fall from the sky unto any tree that reaches beyond its limits. Yet the storms bring with them the promise of new life blooming from the ashes as rain starts to fall. _So will I fall like the rain?_ It was a troubling analogy for the given circumstances, yet so apparent as the storm gathered above her that she could not cast it from her mind.

Stoick shook them from thoughts, glancing up at the sky as she had done moments before. "Weather's coming in."

She smirked at the genuity in his face. "I did mention that only a few seconds ago," she murmured with a wry smile. Yet doubt had shadowed her heart that night, as the storm grew ever closer, threatening to burst and loose its rage upon them. She had been through many storms, heard the thunder scream, only inches from her face and the rain pack down so hard that any bare skin was streamlined with icy scratches.

But this storm was different. It came slower, more ponderously, waiting to break until the proper moment. Break it would, and the Nightwalker would break with it.

**Same as always - I'd be overjoyed if you'd review. Plus you get virtual candy :)**


	5. The First Spark

**This is a short chapter, but it's how Valka and Stoick actually met for the first time. This chapter is dedicated and also sort of a present to FuyukoyoshidaKat, who has been my first ever reviewer who keeps up with and dedicates time to reviewing my chapters. Thank you so much, you kind soul, and thank you to everyone who has followed, favorited, or reviewed this story. I'm officially five chapters in with no end in sight! MWA HA HA!**

**Disclaimer: I own zilch except for maybe the title of this fic...**

She was always in the woods these days, spying on the villagers whenever she got her chance. Much as she hated to admit it, they were rather intriguing, the way the interacted with each other, the way they lived, their heavy steps through the woods as if there were no dangers they could not face. They piqued her curiosity. And so she often found herself watching them go about their daily business.

This, however, was not daily business. The young man was strongly built, as if he were made to carry a sword, and his eyes were hard with fury. She knew he belonged to a rather important person in their strange social hierarchy, and therefore had a record of heroic deeds behind him. Slaying dragons, no doubt.

She narrowed her eyes as her fingers tightened around the curved blade she gripped in her hands. She would end him, glittering sword and all. She had been raised to hunt and look out for those who looked out for her. She felt no remorse at clearing her land of the people who killed her saviors. She could undo them as well as they could drive their sword into a Gnadder's heart.

The young man stepped closer, his rust-colored hair tangling over his eyes as he examined the earth beneath him.

She lunged, just in time to see his dark eyes, like coal with the dying embers of a fire, light up once more and counter her attack with his blade. She moved like a curtain of darkness on a night with no moon, flitting between the trees and circling around him like wolf waiting to tear at its prey. A soft growl eminated from her throat, similar to the hoarse snarl of a dragon before it unleashes its flames.

"You should feel death for yourself before dealing to the innocent," she hissed, slicing at his bare neck once more." Her eyes flickered down to the dragon tracks at her feet, before rising once more like a cold flame to meet his.

"The Nightwalker," he breathed, raising his sword and blocking her attacks. She had known he could fight, but she had not anticipated his skill. He did not seem quick of hand, nor quick of mind, but perhapd he was sharper than he appeared. Certainly for one who had been born and raised in pools of blood and gleaming scales.

"Who are you?" he asked, shielding himself from another attempt on his life. "What do you call yourself?"

"My name is uttered in no tale. Long forgotten by all but me and Death himself, who has taken from me any who knew that name." Her voice was harsh and uneven, as if she had spent too much time running on a cold night.

She said nothing else, instead flicking her blade around his wrist and knocking the sword from his hands. With her opponent on the ground, she advanced, prepared to make the kill.

"But who are you really?" he asked again, inching away from her, his horned helmet knocked from his head. His coal black eyes beseeched her. She lowered her sword.

"Forget me," she spat in the young man's face, and with the words torn from her throat like a sour taste, she vanished into the trees.

"They say I come from the shadows," she whispered to herself, wrapping her lithe form once more in a cloak of night and danger and slinking back to the wilds from whence she came.

"I am the shadows."


	6. Intentional Mistakes

**In this chapter Stoick will meet the mysterious Nightwalker properly, without the use of deadly weapons. Not to say weapons won't come into play in future chapters, as what good love story develops without the aid of near death experiences and dangerous situations? Thanks so much to everyone who follows, reviews, and favorites this story :)**

**Disclaimer: I wish I owned Valka. I totally wish that, because she is turning out to be an EPIC character, despite the fact that half of her background is from my own little world. But I totally own the title 'Nightwalker.' I might need to claim that later for one of my original fics which I do have rights to be they're MINE. MY PRECIOUS. Okaaay, that was a tangent. Point is, I don't own HTTYD nor any of the characters in this fic so far (and I highly doubt there will be OC's in future chapters).**

She would have killed him if she'd known he would come back the next day. Yet this time he bore no weapon. In spite of her better instincts, she at least had a rather simple sense of justice. If an opponent was defenseless, she had no right to attack him.

But this? It was as if the young Viking was trying to appease her. It tore at her heartstrings, this attempt at peace, and made her feel human again, appealing to whatever human feelings were left within her.

Damn him for stirring such emotions, for making her mind want so badly to kill him but her heart to hear him out. Him and all his questions.

She slipped between the trees, dew falling onto her shoulders from above as she stalked beneath the canopy like a dragon hunting its prey. If only she were hunting something so simple as prey. If only she were hunting at all.

The look in this man's eyes bothered her. It was not as if his gaze was filled with violence or fury. No, it was the curiosity. He wanted to know who had fought him the other night. Who had hissed into his face and vanished in the cloak of night.

He looked directly at the old pine behind which she stood, and she flattened her arms against its bark. For one endless moment, she could feel his eyes upon her motionless back, scanning the trees nearby. Then he turned away and continued on his path. And she continued to follow this path, for not only did his curiosity get to her head, but her own curiosity was prickling in the back of her mind. She did her best to push it away, but it had already gotten the best of her.

The young man stopped again and tasted the slight wind. "You leave no trace," he murmured. "But I know you are there. You carry a sense of foreboding wherever you go. You are like the shadows. Always moving, unnoticed, until they stretch across the entirety of the land."

"Wise words," she whispered to herself in response, watching him over the top of a boulder. "If only you knew who I was and what I am."

"You are the Nightwalker," he said to empty air. "The Shadow Man. But even darkness itself can leave a scar upon the earth. You are watching me with dragons' eyes; that much I can feel. But you dare not speak, for you know how we react to legends. Our superstition can get the best of us at times. But you, Nighwalker, you are no legend. So I ask of you, come out and speak with the shape of a myth and the voice of the Northern wind."

"You like folk tales, don't you, Viking?" She did not know what compelled her to step out from her hiding place. Perhaps it was the eloquence of his speech. Perhaps it was the plea for knowledge in his voice. But she liked to believe it was the respect he showed her though he had not yet met her properly.

He spun around at the sound of a woman's voice. Deep and cold, like that of the mountain stone, but a female voice nonetheless. Even he had not foreseen that their Shadow Man was not a man at all, but a woman of the wild lands.

She was dressed in old furs that fell past her shoulders, and her forearms bore the scars of a spring hailstorm. Her hair was thick and matted and swayed as she walked, as if she had made some attempt to tame it but had settled with roping it into whatever random knot had first come to her fingers. Her eyes pierced the skin and soul, a pale gray-blue like the thunderheads that gathered in the sky on a midsummer's eve. She was, indeed, the Nightwalker, caped in black and build like a stone statue from the wilds themselves. A hooked blade hung at her waist.

"So you are the shadow of which the old tales tell," he breathed, staring deep into her eyes. Her face was hard as she dipped her head, as if it were the most difficult thing she had ever done.

"I am," she murmured in response, only loud enough that he could hear. "I am the wanderer of the great mountains and daughter of the raging storm. I have seen the seas lit on fire and heard the thunder's drums as it breaks and wars upon the mountaintops."

"Quite the titles," said the Viking. "I am afraid I only bear one." He held out a hand. "I am Stoick. No deeds of yet to tag onto my name. Son of the chief of Berk."

"The dragon-slayers," she mused, eyeing his cloth-wrapped fingers.

"You shake it," he said, a glint of amusement in his eyes as he watched her brow furrow slightly in thought.

She grimaced. "So I am aware." She shook his hand. She had forgotten how warm a human hand was, even in the dead of winter, and the contact was a shock for her. She could feel a shiver run up her spine.

"Do you have a name?"

"That shall be left unsaid for the time being."

"Perhaps you will tell me later."

"If you see me again."

"Will I?"

She thought for a moment. This was a young Viking, the slayer of her kin. Yet there was something rather odd about his demeanor that she found rather endearing, if her logical mind were to admit to such feelings.

"How often do you see pale light upon my forest scattered bright and clear for all to admire?"

"Once each moon, when the full moon graces us with its presence."

"In the dead of night when the full moon rises will you see me again. Only then. The forest does not grow by day, yet each morning new blossoms may be found. Nor do the mountains grow in sunlight, though each time you climb they feel higher. I am just the same. I cannot risk being out in such light."

"Then why are you out right now?" asked Stoick, his eyes bright at the prospect of speaking to this mysterious wanderer once more.

The woman grimaced at his realization. "A mistake, Stoick, Son of Chief. An intentional mistake."

**Reviews make me happy. Yes, precious, they makes us happy.**

**Me: This isn't a LOTR fic.**

**Smeagol: We thoughts we was in her LOTR fic with all of the NCIS references**

**Me: nope wrong fic. Sorry, Smeagol. Plus, you won't play much of a role in that anyway, because it follows Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. And I didn't know you watched NCIS.**

**Gollum: We loves NCIS, precious. Loves it! We was so sad when Ziva left (spoiler alert). We totally ships Tivases!**

**Me: Okay, this is getting out of hand. I'm done here.**


	7. What Makes Us Human

**Yeah, this chapter is a little sappy towards the end. Oh well. My sappy side is having a field day with this, so I'll let it be like that. Plus after all her cynical confusion I think Valka deserves at least a little sappiness here. I'm sticking with the belief that Stoick only becomes the angry, bitter Viking lord after Valka vanishes, and then he becomes like all the other battle-driven Vikings because he tries to forget everything she said to him so it doesn't cause him pain. Or something like that. **

**Disclaimer: Obviously I don't own squat. But Lord, do I wish I owned this. Though I do own my thunderstorm metaphors. Just laying claim. You know.**

"You still have not told me your name, like you promised," Stoick informed her. She had spoken to him beneath the full moon once more, and disliked her fondness of him. But she had agreed to speak with him again and again. She felt something tugging at her heartstrings and taking control of her that she had not felt in years: emotion.

The last thing she wanted was to admit to herself that she possessed human emotion. All she wanted to believe was that she was as unforgiving and arbitrary as nature itself, but her very presence here was denying her that belief. Damn her curiosity.

"I have no true name. A name would give me a place. Make me human."

"Is that why you do not interact with us? Some grudge against people in general?" Stoick asked her tentatively. He knew the question would probably hit a nerve, but she figured he wanted to gouge how she would react. Whether she would seal her lips and not utter a word or skewer him with the blade still hanging at her waist. He'd made a smart move, leaving his weapons behind when he came to see her. If there was anything she had learned in ten years of fending for herself, it was the inherent danger of human weapons.

"I do not like you," she told him simply. It was vague and showed no emotions aloud.

He cocked his head slightly. "Why? We are not bad."

"You are destructive and violent and impulsive. You do not understand beauty. All you know how to do is destroy what the world has created." Her voice was bitter and harsh, like an ocean coated with burning oil. Broken and dying by means that were so illogical and ironic that he could not even understand them. But more alive than ever before. It hurt him to hear the harshness in her throat as she spoke.

"We're not so bad," he told her quietly.

"You kill for pleasure," she tacked onto her list of vices in response.

"You're human, too, you know."

She looked up at him, her eyes cold. There was something there that he couldn't place. It was veiled in layers of mist built up over years of wandering and distrust, but there was at least something that proved she could still feel for others. For herself.

"I choose not think that about myself."

"So you're in denial."

"I choose not to think that either."

"Let me show you," he said. "Let me prove that we're not evil." He didn't know what compelled him to prove to this Nightwalker that not all Vikings were evil. He wanted to be the one to save her from her own self-hatred. Because as much as she told herself she wasn't human, he knew that deep down she knew she was, and she loathed herself for it. He could see her struggle even now, the way she shifted uncomfortably at hearing his voice and her slight flinch as she listened to the eloquence of her own words. There was a war going down inside of her, pricking at her skin and tearing open the boundaries inside her eyes that she was desperately trying to uphold.

"Tell me then," she hissed. "Tell me you have not slaughtered the innocent and fought wars of blame. Tell me you have not desired to best a mountain or tame a forest. Tell me these wilds are not yours to control. Then perhaps I will be convinced." She lifted her chin, conscious that her challenge to this chief's son was just her final effort to keep hold of her stubborn beliefs. She didn't want to find out now that the Vikings were not evil, for it would break her last sense of surety, and yet she truly did see the good in Stoick and preferred to go on seeing it. Her mind was filled to the brim with utter confusion that she couldn't sort out if her life depended on it.

"When I see a mountain I seen an inconquerable force. When I look at a forest I see a living army that is not to be trifled with. And when I see you, I see a storm that turns the sky a thousand shades of gray and purple and rolls across the wilderness, letting loose daggers of lightning upon the people it fools itself into believing it's in conflict with, when it's really in conflict with itself."

She looked at him again, and she saw a man carved from the stones of the wild. The same stones she loved to pretend she had been carved from, so she could forget the death and fire borne down upon her shoulders all those years before. The same burning ships and swirling ocean she saw when she looked at any other person.

"There is no difference," Stoick insisted, watching the shadows that passed over her face and soon vanished, as if memories were flickering by her and dying out. She did not know what compelled her to do what she did next; in fact she had no idea what she was doing. It was simply the human instinct she had suppressed for the last ten years. Something inside her snapped, almost audibly, as the veils left her eyes and the mist cleared for the first time. She grabbed him by the furs strewn across his shoulders and smashed her lips against his.

"There is a difference," she mumbled into his lips, for as much as she had realized in her jumbled mess of a brain in the past few moments, she could not forget the final screams of a dragon as human swords claimed its life. "You will destroy yourselves someday," she whispered into his lips like the cynical prophet she figured she was. "It pains me to say so, but you will, and I will be there when you go down in flames. I will see the light die in your eyes, and I will laugh and laugh until finally I begin to weep hysterically over your ashes. And then I shall go on. You will die, and I will fade into nothingness."

He simply kissed her again and chuckled lightly, as if brushing off her terribly prophecy. "But we're both finite, Nightwalker, so we might as well live whatever life we have left."

"Valka," she told him as stone crumbled inside her. Everything else was snapping now, and who was she to stop it?

"Valka is my name."

**Review with any story you want to see written here in further chapters! Also, I totally imagine Valka and Stoick when I hear that song Carry On.**

**Smeagol: We likes sappy kiss scenes, precious**

**Me: You're disturbing my mind. Get out of this story. You belong in my LOTR fanfics. And you're lines are creeping me out. Are you sure you're not a little OOC?**

**Smeagol: OOC? No, precious. We're not OOC at allses. We LOVES the precious and we wants to marry it.**

**Me: Well, still a better love story than ****_Twilight_****, so I suppose I can't complain.**


	8. Special Edition: Busting Bad Guys

**SPECIAL EDITION CHAPTER: Stoick and Valka Bust Some Bad Guys**

**In this special Valentine's Day Edition chapter, we have a rather strange AU setting. Stoick is a cop working for the Berk Police Department, which leaves Valka to be the private consulting detective who hates cops. Here I bring you the kindling of their love in a the setting of car chases and gunfights. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own How to Train Your Dragon. I also don't own a 1980 Cadillac Coup-Deville. Which is too bad, really, because those cars look so awesome.**

The woman held out her callused hand. "I'm Valka," she said without a trace of emotion in her voice. "Private detective. Don't work with the cops."

He chuckled and ran a hand through his copper hair. "Stoick. Berk Police Department. If you don't like cops, why'd you let them hire you on this case?"

"Needed a buck. Much as I hate to admit it, money is what runs the world these days. Plus I figured you could use the help. I've busted quite a few cartels in my day. _Without_ the assistance of the Police Department, mind you."

"So you're a Lone Ranger type of character? You have the voice for it." He grinned cheekily. "And the hat."

She glared at him and slammed the gas, smirking in satisfaction as he lurched forward and groaned against the seatbelt.

"Really," he said hoarsely, "I like cowboy hats."

"And I don't like you."

The wheels spun as Valka whipped out of the parking lot and nearly killed an advertisement billboard before turning into the streets.

"Remind me again," Stoick asked her tentatively, his chest still slightly heaving from the shock of being thrown up against the dashboard. "Where are we going?"

"My apartment," she muttered in response. "Because not all of us are lucky enough to have access to a professional crime lab."

"Right. Apartment. I'll shut up now."

"You do that," growled Valka as she made another sharp left turn, blatantly ignoring the stop sign at the corner.

It was only in the car that Stoick got an uninterrupted view of his new partner. She had piercing gray eyes that, even after just barely meeting her, could give a sardonic glare like no one else he'd ever seen. Her hair fell to her waist in a messy braid that he doubted could even be considered a braid, and her face was slightly flushed and sweaty.

"I know you're staring at me," she growled without taking her eyes off the road. "And I probably smell like Death, but I arrived here straight from closing a minor drug case. Our suspect decided to run for it, and because I don't carry a gun, I found myself in a rather sticky situation."

"You don't carry a gun?" he asked incredulously.

"I suspect I'm just in denial, but I'm trying to prove to you trigger-happy cop force that you don't need bullets to close a case."

"Well how do you catch the bad guys?"

"Kung-fu and a Swiss Army knife."

He whistled. "That must be hard."

"No shit, Sherlock."

He smiled, his eyes lighting up playfully. "I think Sherlock would be you," he said with a cheesy grin, and for a moment she couldn't decide whether to kiss him senseless or shoot him on the spot. But she knew neither option would land her in an easy position, so she remained calm and focused on driving.

Stoick was about to make another smart remark just to kill the awkward silence between them when a silver sedan smashed into their back bumper.

With one quick look in the rearview mirror, Valka swore and spun the car back around faster than Stoick thought was possible in a 1980 Coup-Deville.

"Those are the guys who tried to shoot me last week!" she hissed and slammed her old cowboy boot against the gas pedal in hot pursuit of the now retreating SUV. "They're probably in cahoots with the gunman who had a go at me yesterday!"

"How normal is this for you?"

"Generally someone tries to kill me at least once a week when I'm involved with a cartel case, but when I'm on a murder, it can happen every other day or so."

"And you _don't_ call the police?"

She turned a corner and narrowly avoided hitting a produce truck full of vegetables. "I told you, I don't like cops! They think they're so high and mighty, and then they go and get themselves killed because they can't operate without a gun in their hand!"

"That's not the point right now!" shouted Stoick, gesturing toward the sedan. "The point is someone just tried to kill us! Not that I'm surprised or anything, but we don't even know who they are!"

"I do."

"What?"

"Sure. They have the same tire treads as the tracks I found at last week's murder. Not to mention they have the same insurance policy as the car that shot me yesterday, as well as tracing back to the same rental shop in Mexico."

"And you didn't think to tell the police?" Stoick ran his hand down his face in exasperation. When they told him he'd be working with a private investigator, he hadn't expected her to be so eccentric.

"I told you already-"

"You don't like the cops. I know," he breathed out heavily, resting his forehead on the dash. "Let's just track down the people who want us dead."

Without a second thought, Valka drew a Swiss Army knife from her satchel and rolled down the window.

"What are you doing?" he asked her, eyes wide as dinner plates, as she opened a small blade on the knife and tossed it out.

"They're going to come back around and try to take us from behind again. That's why they turned this way. With any luck, that knife will blow their tire and we'll take them from here. And with more luck, you'll be able to use that gun of yours properly. As long as I'm stuck with a cop I may as well make use of his equipment."

Stoick gaped at her. "Is this how you always operate? On luck?"

"Well I do have a Plan B, but generally luck is involved, yes."

"What's Plan B?"

"I said I had one, not that I knew what it was."

Stoick just sighed.

"There they are!"

Valka had removed her seatbelt and spun around to watch the approaching silver Sedan. And, as luck would have it, the sedan's right tire rolled over Valka's knife and instantly flattened into a shape that somewhat resembled the instant breakfast Stoick had that morning.

She opened her side door and bolted out of the car, nothing said, leaving Stoick to follow and hope that she might inform him as to what was going on. He drew his gun out of his belt and approached their target's car.

"Hands behind your back!" called Stoick as he cocked his gun, and Valka was already running toward the driver's window.

"What are you doing? Trying to get yourself killed?" he asked her despite the fact that he knew it would just go in one ear and out the other. A thick man got out of the car and aimed his gun at Valka.

Much to Stoick's surprise, she knocked it from his hand with one swift kick and had him on the ground in two. The other two men got out the back and tried to run, but two stray bullets, and they were down on their knees at the mercy of the law.

"Not bad for a cop," said Valka with a smirk as the indignant policeman handcuffed all three criminals and watched his colleagues, who had just barely arrived at the scene, lead them away.

He grinned at her. "We got them outlaws."

"Sorry. You can't pull off the Lone Ranger thing."

"Can I get you some Wild West barbecue then?" he asked hopefully, pulling a couple of bills from his pocket. He'd intended to use them for grocery shopping so he'd have less trouble with the self checkouts than when he used his credit card, but easy dinner would suffice for now.

"With a cop?"

"I'm you're new partner. You're going to have to deal with me anyway."

"What the heck. Might as well. Gimme the keys." She held out her hand for the car keys.

He raised his eyebrows dubiously. "No way. You're a crazy driver. I ought to give you a parking ticket for all the stop signs you passed today, but given the immediate threats to our life, I'll let it pass."

"Fine," she said. Then her face broke into a smile. "If you can drive a stick shift."

Stoick groaned and tossed her the keys.

**Read and review guys! And remember, if you want a certain drabble done, PM me or post it in a review. And if you want another special edition chapter, tell me and give me a setting. If my muse is still running on Valentines Day sugar high then I might end up with a separate story about Stoick and Valka as cops. But that's not likely at the moment.**


	9. The Nature of Legends

**I know, I haven't updated in a while. Please don't hurt me. I've been really, really busy and all, and my evil muse went on sugar high again and wanted to write a story based on the peculiar resemblance between Irina Spalko (Indiana Jones) and Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp version). At least in terms of appearance. See, my brain's a little off balance right now, I fear, and so this drabble might not be grammatically sound. Please point out my grammar errors if you find them. I'm beginning to imagine a younger Stoick looking like a red-headed Kili, as the Vikings always reminded me a little Middle Earth's Dwarves. Except probably taller. And then Stoick's older self looking like a red-headed Thorin... Of course Valka's just molded partially off what I gleaned from the trailer and partially off my own completely random imaginings. **

**Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I own nothing but my writing. And I don't have the cash to buy rights to HTTYD. Nor do I own Middle Earth, of course. Which sucks. But I will survive. **

"The Nightwalker?" Gobber had asked him one evening, in the presence of a roaring fire and more than one roasted bird. "You mean from the legends?"

"Yes, but what if the Nightwalker wasn't just a legend?" Stoick pressed, hoping that Gobber would work out what he was trying to say before he had to come out and say it aloud. He had realized that eventually Gobber would find out on his own, and he would prefer for his friend to find out from him and not from the forest.

Gobber narrowed his eyes. Unlike Stoick, his beard was more than just a stubble on an angular face that shadowed his face in suspicion as he spoke. "What are you trying to imply?"

"Only that this legend could be more than an old wives' tale."

Gobber snorted and took a sip of ale from his mug. "Oh, yes, because there really is a Shadow Man lurking about our mountain."

"Not our mountain," Stoick interjected before his better sense could stop him. "Her mountain. The Nightwalker's."

"_Her_?" Harsh coughs came from his throat, and Stoick could not tell whether his companion was laughing or choking on his ale in shock. "What do you mean, her?"

Stoick sighed. He'd known, in the back of his mind, that it would come to this. He would have to tell Gobber outright what he was trying to imply. "I mean," he began cautiously, "that the Nightwalker is real. That our Shadow Man is, in fact, a woman of the mountains. She knows each peak like the back of her hand and can pass unseen by most when she pleases. But she is a human woman, a daughter of the wilds."

Gobber shook his head in disbelief. "How do you know all this?"

"Because I know her." Stoick's forehead was resting in his hands as the weight of his secrets slowly overcame him. "Quite well, really."

And then the weight of his words finally hit Gobber, as well, and his eyes grew wide with shock and no small amount of fear. "Oh, Stoick, what have you done?" he whispered, drowning himself in the remainder of his ale, as if that would wipe away the whole thing.

"My father is not going to react well to this," Stoick murmured. "I was hoping you could help soften the blow?"

"That depends. How deep does your relationship with this Nightwalker run?"

"To the roots." He didn't even lift his eyes.

"And you father is a major problem because?"

"Because he wants me to marry. He expects me to have chosen a bride within the next moon, and to produce an heir before he dies. You know how his health deteriorates, Gobber."

Gobber sighed loudly, exhaling all his friend's problems onto the rotting wood of the table. "Back up for a moment. Tell me your history with the Nightwalker and perhaps I will have a better idea of the gravity of your situation."

"I met her in the forest," Stoick began, recalling the details of his first and rather unnerving sight of Valka. "It was night, and I was tracking a dragon. She attacked me with claw-shaped blade, and in the dark she looked like a ghost or a shadow. Terrifying, yes, but she piqued my curiosity, for she had confirmed in my head that the Nightwalker, the Shadow Man, was not just an old village myth. So I went back.

"She revealed herself to me in daylight, a woman of the wildlands, with storms and wildfires blazing in her eyes." He was careful not to mention her real name, as he understood it was only for his lips to utter.

"You're romanticizing the tale, my dear friend," said Gobber with a chuckle.

Stoick tlited his chin proudly. "I am telling it as I felt it then, Gobber," he informed the older Viking, before continuing the story. "She said perhaps I would see her again beneath the light of the full moon. That was nearly a year ago. Since then, we have met every full moon."

"Except for this one," interrupted Gobber for the second time, glancing up at the ceiling, beyond which he knew the full moon glowed overhead.

"Which is why I come to you tonight. She said she would be gone, but told me not where. I fear she has discovered a greater danger than what the dragons can impose upon our tribe, and that she has gone to counter it."

Gobber leaned back in his chair, satisfied that the story Stoick told him was the truth. "Well, from what you've said, she seems competent enough to hold her own in a fight and manage whatever peril she may have gotten herself into."

"I didn't say the story was finished, Gobber. What if I were to tell you that the Nightwalker was carrying my child?"

Once again, Gobber choked on his ale, though there was not so much ale left in his mug than the concentrated remains of it that he was sipping to retain his regular mental health.

"_What_?"

"I'm not repeating myself, Gobber. You heard what I said."

"This is all purely hypothetical, right?" said Gobber with a nervous laugh.

Stoick shook his head. "None of it is in any way hypothetical. Which is why I fear to speak with my father."

"Can you bring her to the village?"

"I will not sacrifice all that I love in her, my friend," he said with a slight smile. "I fell in love with the daughter of alpine winters and raging storms, and I cannot take those traits from her."

"You're very difficult to deal with, Stoick," said Gobber, carefully. "What will you do with the child?"

"I'm still thinking," he muttered. "That is a complicated question."

"You know as well as I do they won't care where that child came from as long as you have an heir to become chief after you."

"I'm debating over how fair it is to lay that burden on a child's shoulders."

"I'm not here to tell you what's fair, Stoick, that isn't my job. Nor is this counseling session, for that matter. I can bear your secrets as long as you need me to, but I cannot hold sway in the matter. These decisions are for you to make."

He scooped up his ale and got up from the table.

**Smeagol would like me to inform you that he misses you all. Gollum would like me to inform you that he hates you and wants to wring all of our filthy neckses. But you probably shouldn't listen to Gollum. See they're on vacation in the Bahamas and are leaving the sarcastic notations at the end of this drabble to me (lazy, lazy) while they go and give tourists heart attacks in the Caribbean. **

**Read and review, and leave me prompts if you want them!**


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